Tales of the Wasteland
by GelibeanH20
Summary: Prompts. I grab the dictionary, find a word and write a story from it. If I find a good idea, I may develop it elsewhere. No stories will exceed 1000 words. Ratings, pairings, characters and genres will vary, but nothing above T rated and I'm not sure if anything will be set in an AU.
1. Know-How

**So I'm just going to dump various one-shots here. I shall not discriminate via genres, plots, pairings or whathaveyou, but nothing explicit. Just the first of many, probably. Oh, and some may contain OCs. May.**

_So for this prompt I decided to go and find a word in the thesaurus and write from it. It's a good idea. Try it._

**Word: Know-How**

Alexander Gromov had very little "street smarts". _Who needs 'em?_ he figured. _Not me!_

Although high school was rough for him because he was small, too talkative for his own good and a _huge_ smart-aleck, once out into the real world, being smart had its privileges. Being pretty rich was one of them. Also, as it turns out, brainy _was_ the new sexy.

But not anymore.

After the oxygen pump broke and he ventured out into the wild yonder of the wastelands, it became very apparent to him that attending gym class more often in his youth would have been beneficial. As soon as he set foot outside, he encountered a hideous beast battling three mortal men. How in all the hells they survived was beyond him. But they were obviously skilled, so he stuck with them.

He eventually realized that their so-called "Captain" was Project Seven and "Snippy" was Charles Snippy who continuously showered him in tightly worded notes about the quality of the workspace at the G-Cube. Being hardly able to keep a secret, his identity came out in no time.

As expected, he received a hard punch to the face.

The breath was knocked out of him as he fell to the ground. Charles was sitting astride his chest, his fist cocked back for another blow, his other hand holding notes with _Alexander Gromov_ printed on them.

It had taken Pilot and Captain to pull Charles off of Alex, then another hour to calm him down. It was several weeks before Snippy grudgingly agreed to go on a mission with him.

The wasteland was icier than normal—and that's saying something. Gusts of wind blew through the decrepit buildings. Alex shivered and clung to his coat. Charles marched on ahead of him, somehow silent despite all the metal bits surrounding them and the crunching snow underfoot.

"Charles?" His voice sounded hoarse and tired. He was shivering, despite the fur on his jacket.

Snippy stopped and looked at him, his goggles giving the impression of quirking an eyebrow.

Alex looked down at his feet. "Can you teach me how to shoot a gun?"

"Why?" Charles' voice was colder than the wasteland.

Poking at the ground, he said, "I don't want to be useless. You have the wasteland know-how and all I have is this." He tapped his head.

Snippy shrugged. "That can be useful, if you know how to apply it."

That was probably the nicest thing that anyone had said to him in ages. He ducked his head sheepishly.

He felt a hand on his arm. Alex looked up and locked eyes with Charles.

"Listen," he said slowly. "I've been kinda hard on you, lately. Frankly, you deserve it."

He nodded. That was true.

"But on the other hand," he continued. "We need to stay together as a team. If we split apart, surely we'll die. This isn't the urban jungle, anymore. Social hierarchy doesn't apply."

"But Captain…"

"Yeah, he and Pilot think that he's a god. Just ignore them, when you can. What I'm saying, is that we're comrades now, yeah?" He held out a hand to shake.

Alex took it, feeling the weight of the statement. "So… you'll teach me how to shoot?"

"Eventually." Charles sounded amused as he turned around. "Once you finish building Captain's motorized zebra."

He sighed, having forgotten about that. "Don't remind me."

Snippy's laughter was carried away by the wind in the wasteland.


	2. Appetizing

_Word Prompt: Appetizing_

**I should note that these are very, very loosely based on the words. Heck, the word may only just SHOW UP in the work, but you know… it's inspiration. **

Snippy hadn't had a good meal in weeks. Scratch that… he hadn't had a good meal in _years._ He wasn't sure, but something about rat pancakes just wasn't all that appetizing. Because of this, he spent most of the time hungry, ill, or a combination thereof. In any case, this was just one of many reasons why he's grumpy a lot of the time. Pilot was another reason.

Pilot was the cause of most of Snippy's splitting headaches, most of Snippy's various bumps and bruises, and he was even the cause of a broken forearm for three long, horrible months. The aviator seemed to think that Snippy was something that would go away if he was mean enough. He couldn't be more wrong.

Pilot hated the Snippy-shoe. He was continuously plotting to take his Captain away from him. He was doing a rather bad job at it, too, because during that whole time when Pilot was searching for a flying machine, he had Captain all to himself but hadn't managed to make a go of it. Pilot sniffed with disdain every time he saw the jiggly slug. What a stinky sneaker!

He liked watching the stupid slug squirm with pain or discomfort. There was an odd niggly feeling in the back of his head that told him that what he was doing wasn't good or right, but he ignored the voice, sending it to the same place in his cranium as the voices in Eureka, locking them away for good. Occasionally, the voice came out to play and tell him that he should try being nicer to the shoe, but he very politely told it to "GO AWAY" and it usually did.

But not today.

Snippy was hunting through piles of debris, trying to find supplies and avoid attracting hideous mutations. Pilot was lying flat on his stomach on top of a nearby building with a pile of rocks at his right hand side.

_You shouldn't be doing this,_ said the soft little voice, not quite like his own.

"Go away!" he muttered. Snippy didn't hear him. He picked up a tiny pebble and threw it at the Sniper. It bounced off his shoulder, but either Snippy didn't feel it or he didn't care.

Attempt two. He tossed another rock at him, this time the size of his thumb. Again, no obvious response.

_You might hurt him,_ said the voice. _Captain wouldn't like that. Besides, what's he ever done to you?_

"Shut up." He said this a little louder. Snippy tilted his head. He heard something, that time, and he didn't like the sounds of it.

Pilot picked up a rock the size of his fist and curled back to throw it.

_Don't._

The voice was more forceful than usual. Odd, that. Normally it was just a quiet whisper in the back of his mind.

_Put the rock down._

He didn't like the voice. It sounded angry. He dropped the rock.

_Now, go down there and give Snippy a sandwich._

"Why?"

_Just do it._

"Okay," he said softly.

Five minutes later, Snippy heard footsteps behind him and turned, levelling the gun with Pilot's chest.

"Oh. It's you." Snippy didn't sound so pleased.

Pilot held out a sandwich. "Here."

Cautiously, Snippy took it and analysed it, peeling back the bread to make sure there wasn't anything nasty inside. "Uh… Thanks? Did Captain ask you do to this?"

"No."

"Then why…"

"The voice made me."

Snippy's goggles gave him the look of being unimpressed. "The… voice?"

Pilot tapped his temple. "In my head. It said that I should be nicer to you."

"And you're listening to it?"

"It's even scarier than Captain when he's angry! I don't like it! Can you make it go away?"

Snippy thought back to the bookstore he had passed the day before. There had been a psychology section. "I… I can try. But no guarantees."

"Really?" Pilot sounded hopeful.

Before Snippy could draw a breath, he found the air being crushed from his lungs by one of Pilot's python hugs.

"Thanks!"

"You're welcome," he choked out.

Snippy took a minute to wonder which was worse: a nice Pilot or a mean Pilot. He looked down at the sandwich. It did look appetizing…

**Send me prompts! I'm not just doing dictionary words, I can do others, too!**


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